


Every Time You Leave

by theLoyalRoyalGuard



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Witcher Fusion, Blind Xiǎo Xīngchén, M/M, Reunions, Touch adverse Song Lan, find all the references i dare you, these two worlds blend surprisingly well, toss a coin to your Xingchen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26195209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLoyalRoyalGuard/pseuds/theLoyalRoyalGuard
Summary: The village appears empty when the blind witcher comes in from the north road.
Relationships: Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn/Xiǎo Xīngchén
Comments: 18
Kudos: 57





	Every Time You Leave

The village appears empty when the blind witcher comes in from the north road. His cloak is the color of dust, of old snow, driftwood that has lost all its living green. He wears a cloth band tied around his head, the same grey stark against his dark hair, but it doesn't quite hide the scars of an old fight. A fight where the witcher was unlucky, but his prey was less lucky still, or he wouldn't be here, walking into the little village called Yi, all alone with his sword on his back.

There is no one in Yi to hire him, no tavern for him to warm his aching bones, no tired but generous grandmother to offer him a bowl of soup or a cup of wine. In the little village called Yi, there is no one waiting for him but the dead.

At least, that is what the witcher expects. 

It is coming on towards night as the witcher walks down the narrow lane, the packed earth dry beneath his feet, so that he makes no sound. It is coming on towards night, but night makes less difference to a blind witcher than even to one whose eyes still see. 

Besides, he is hunting the rumors of a nightwraith, a girl who took her own life rather than marry the man who killed her brother. He doubts she intended to come back, to linger like this, but who can say? The kind of anguish that leads to suicide sometimes traps the dead in the very place they wished so desperately to leave.

Death, he knows all too well, is neither refuge nor escape.

Then again, it’s just as possible she did mean to come back, to punish those who’d wronged her. In the end, it will make no difference to what the witcher is here to do. Find the dead girl’s remains, and lay her ghost to rest. 

The village of Yi was a welcoming place, perhaps not so long ago. If the witcher still had eyes to see it, he would have enjoyed the flowers painted on whitewashed walls, would have appreciated the swirl of orange and red, yellow and blue, the green painted vines climbing over the lintels of the doors. Faded though they are now, peeling from wind and weather and drowned in the dry dust of the road, they are lovely still, the way that memories are lovely in their lingering. 

But the charms of Yi are lost to him, and only its dangers remain. 

The witcher walks to the end of the road, to the place where the buildings end and the village square begins, with its abandoned well that was once the beating heart of civilization here. There, just within the shadow of what might have been a shop—the sign overhead is illegible even if he could have seen it—the witcher stops. Wind tugs at the hems of his cloak, lifts ragged banners of his black hair to twist before his face.

He does not move. He does not appear even to breathe. Merely stands, listening.

Listening for the soft fall of a booted foot on hard ground, the measured breath of a man, always listening for…

But it is not him. It is never never… him. The witcher is alone, except for the dead of the village called Yi. The dead abandoned so long even the corpse eaters lost interest and moved on.

The witcher moves, shakes his head slightly, a small and mirthless smile at the corners of his lips. His kind are rare now in the world, and growing rarer. Those who wield steel and magic to set the dead to rest are so much fewer than those who use steel and magic to create more dead. It’s all too likely no other has passed through since the girl died and left her wraith behind.

The rumors said the girl was blind, but he would have come here anyway. He is not like other witchers, he does not care for money except what he needs for food, and hardly even that. People cheat him. People spit on him. It is of no concern. He is here for the girl, for the restless ghost of a blind girl who died unjustly.

If he receives gold for it, well, that is a benefit, but not the reason.

His name is Xiao Xingchen, and the cat’s head medallion on his chest and the pointed tips of his ears tell his history. A disreputable breed from a disreputable school, some day he will die and no one will mourn him. 

At least, that is what the witcher expects. 

He’s wrong, of course. He has often been wrong, more often than he may ever know. 

*

The cat’s head, snarling, hums against his chest, a fine vibration the witcher feels in his bones. He touches it, lightly, with two fingers, as if to say _I know_ , as if it were a pet, a companion to stroke and soothe. He tilts his head, listening, hearing elf-sharp, witcher-sharp. 

It’s too early, yet, the night still young. She isn’t roaming the village, so he has time, a little time, to look for her and find what tethers her to this world. It was easier when he had eyes, sight was… important to him. He holds the memory of it close inside him, of sunlight through the trees; of the moon hanging full-bellied over a lake; of a beloved face…

It was important to him, but it is not necessary. He has learned other ways, in ten years, to survive and do what needs doing. Brought suddenly into motion again, he steps into the village square, head tilted one way and then another. The last slash of rose gold sunlight slants between the hunched walls of the houses and across his face, painting the shadows beneath his cheekbones like brush strokes, the lines of his features cast for an instant in sharp relief of bright and dark, fine-cut as diamond as he turns into the faint warmth of it. And then it is gone, and darkness swallows the little village called Yi. The witcher feels the chill, and hurries on.

He hears them even as the medallion hums against his chest, the sound of them like shattering glass and angry-cat hiss of wind. Behind him, among the houses, the hissing grows in pursuit. Wraiths. Not the nightwraith, there are too many, and they do not cry and rage like she will. These are the resentful spirits of those who died here, those she killed, before the rest fled.

Shuanghua comes to his hand, sharp and heavy as a kiss, a gorgeous arc of steel as he spins into the first and boldest wraith. She guides his hand, the dust-colored cloak blooming around him, grey and then lit gold as the fingers of his free hand form the Sign of Quen. Insubstantial claws slide off him, turned aside before they can touch flesh. Shuanghua shreds the wraith to smoke.

But there are more, enough he cannot count them by hearing alone. Five, six, at least, weak alone but strong together, and the truth is, he wasn’t prepared for them. He only came for the blind girl, for the nightwraith. They wail, sob, shriek as the witcher whirls between them, their touch cold on his cheek, his chest, his throat.

The witcher is silent, silent as a grave should be, but it is the grave that screams. The wraiths scream and fade as silver shears them from the world.

Blood spreads dark lines in the grey cloak, smears black on his fair skin. His chest was protected. His cheek, his throat, were not. 

When the wraiths are gone, he is not alone. 

Someone runs towards the witcher, fast and light on the packed earth, too light for a farmer, a soldier, a bandit. 

The witcher lowers his sword to his side, the point inches above the trampled ground and the tracks of his battle. Blood oozes sluggishly from the cuts, but his heart races as fast as the running steps coming towards him. He came here expecting to meet only the dead, but he has been wrong about many things, and he was wrong about this.

The witcher tips back his head towards the unseen sky, ignoring the pull and protest of torn skin, and his mouth curves in a smile as sharp and ragged as the wound before he speaks a single word.

“Zichen.”

*

Witchers, everyone knows, travel alone. A violent breed, unable to bear any company, least of all that of others of their own kind. Less still the company of witchers from other schools. Mutants, twisted and made into machines of death, are they not little better than the monsters they were created to kill?

Yet, once, there were two witchers who broke that unspoken law, and walked the Path side by side, hand in hand, one might say, all but literally. Not only two witchers, but witchers of different schools, for the medallion Song Zichen wore bore a wolf’s head snarling at the world from its place upon his chest. 

From town to town they went, village to village, until they were known between the Pontar and the Yaruga. Known for their fairness, their gentleness. Known to speak softly and never to ask too much to kill a drowner or a ghoul or find the body of a son lost in the darker parts of the woods where few dared follow. 

They were trusted, as much as witchers were ever trusted, and liked as much as witchers were ever liked.

And then, ten years past, they went away on a hunt and never came back. When Song Zichen was seen again, he was alone, and his gentleness had hardened into a cool and distant silence. 

No one asked after the fate of Xiao Xingchen. Everyone who would think to ask also thought they knew the answer. And ten years is a long time to those who are not witchers, and now no one thinks to ask, and no one thinks to tell when a blind witcher in a robe the color of the ashes of dead wood goes to hunt a nightwraith alone in a village called Yi.

No one asked, so no one knows, that Song Zichen was the last person Xiao Xingchen saw, and the one thing Xiao Xingchen wants most in the world is to see Song Zichen again. More than full-bellied moon and lake and sunset and mountain, Xiao Xingchen would give anything for one glimpse of Song Zichen. 

It is, after all, for him that Xiao Xingchen can no longer see. 

In the dark and the stink and the wretched violence of the hunt, the devourer had aimed for him, Zichen, dearest and most beloved of all things in the world. It would have torn the life from Song Zichen’s throat, a disaster of a creature, it had reached out for him-- and Xiao Xingchen had flung himself between, and given his eyes for Song Zichen’s life.

It was not a poor trade, really. Perhaps he had not been unlucky at all. Everything had a price. The price of Zichen’s life was never to see him again.

*

The running feet stagger to a halt, a last uneven step, the runner brought up short as if reaching the end of a rope. But the witcher knows, he _knows_ , long before another word passes between them, before—

“Xingchen?”

The voice an unused rasp, metallic, unpleasant on the ears and yet the most welcome sound in the world. The voice that breaks on a sob of repetition. “Xingchen!” 

Air moves between them, the sudden pressure of a body in the same space as his, the not-quite-touching of him and the sound of ragged breath, the heat of it against the cool skin of Xiao Xingchen’s cheek. The stir in the air of a raised hand, fingertips against the cloth bound around the ruin of Xiao Xingchen’s eyes, always on cloth and never—almost never—on skin.

He’s close, he's so close, he’s _here_ , and the witcher’s body hums like his medallion, in answer not to magic but to— to Song Lan Zichen, last sight and dearest friend. The scent of him alone, smoke and iron, pine and old sweat, is overwhelming in its intimacy, its perfect familiarity. He is undone by it, by scent alone, and only the grounding pressure of two fingers against the cloth at his temple keeps him from shaking apart like one of the wraiths.

“You’re… alive,” Song Zichen rasps. “Xingchen.” He says the name again, as if it’s a taste he can’t get enough of, as if it’s water and he’s dying of thirst. “You’re bleeding.”

“It is nothing. A scratch. I was imprudent.” He directs his attention, the angle of his head, towards Song Zichen’s face, towards where he knows it to be by memory and the whisper of breath. “Zichen…” Perhaps he, too, is dying of thirst. “What are you doing here?”

The warm hand a whisper from his cheek drops away. He does not chase after it, has never been the one to do the chasing. “Much the same as you, I imagine. I came for the contract.”

“There’s a contract?”

“Of course.” He can hear the frown in Song Zichen’s voice, and it’s a relief to know, to picture it and know his mood even now. “If you didn’t know…”

“I followed rumors, stories, put the pieces together. I know where I am needed.” And he had never cared about being paid, not like he is supposed to. It’s not just villagers that need him, here. “You can take back the proof, I don’t mind. Stop frowning at me.”

“How did you—”

“You always frown when I say things like that.” The witcher smiles again, but this smile is a soft thing, remote as the crescent moon, and there’s the smallest catch in Song Zichen’s breath.

“Then we’ll fight it together, and split the reward.”

“Like old times?” Xiao Xingchen asks, and there’s hope in him, so much hope he cannot explore, cannot admit to. Not alone. Hardly even to himself. That somehow, Zichen still wants to do even this small thing together, that Zichen has finally returned to him, perhaps by more than simple chance.

“Like old times,” Song Zichen agrees.

*

There is a coffin by the well in the village center. The witcher is largely serene about his blindness, it has never occurred to him to regret what he risked and lost, but had he still had eyes, he would have seen it immediately from where he’d stood among the houses. As it is, Song Zichen leads him to it. The girl’s remains lie inside, unburied, unmourned, no rites said for her spirit, no offerings left to appease her. She has nothing but the plain dress she died in to wrap her bones. 

Grief has a scent as clear and strong as the stale old rot as they lift the coffin lid together, hands never touching on the rough wood. Splinters bite at the witcher’s palms. That stink of grief and range so strong it held a spirit bound here in its suffering assails the fragile joy of standing near Zichen again. He shudders. The medallion hums against his chest.

“She’s here,” he says even before they hear her, the tap of a stick on the ground and then the wailing cry, the fury before she attacks.

It’s believed, as many false things are believed, that witchers feel nothing, that the process that makes them what they are leaves them devoid of emotion, incapable even of understanding it in others. But the witcher feels sorry, as he draws the sword from his shoulder. Sorry they cannot do more for her, sorry she was alone, sorry she could not be saved. 

They can release her. That is all. That will have to be enough.

She is all claws and rage against injustice; she is right and he is unable to express to her that those who wronged her are gone, dead or far away. He can only wrong her further in the name of setting her to rest. He cannot save her, he can only save others from her.

But the witcher is not alone now, not fighting for his life, for his life is defended, his body defended, by the sword and body of Song Zichen. And perhaps it would seem another danger to him, to both of them, to fight so close when Xiao Xingchen cannot see, but he doesn’t need to see, has never needed eyes to know where Zichen is beside him. He falls into the old rhythm they used to share, the perfect harmony. If he’d ever had time to worry they might have lost this, his worries would quickly have been set to rest.

The beat of Zichen’s feet on the packed earth sets the meter, and Xiao Xingchen’s the counterpoint, and they dance to it in the little village called Yi, strike and pirouette and parry until he ducks beneath the sweep of Zichen’s blade and the air turns searing cold in his lungs. The last cry of the nightwraith fills him, echoes in his bones and scrapes through his marrow. It reaches into every rage and sorrow in him and finds answer there even as it fades.

The witcher’s knees hit the ground with bruising force, his cloak pooling around him like ashes on a pyre. There’s a rush of movement beside him, air against his cheek, the hush of layered cloth. 

“Xingchen.” The voice is so rough and so familiar. There’s wet heat on his cheeks and the scars of his eyes burn. Crying. He is crying, and the tears always bleed. No wonder Zichen sounds so worried. “You’re hurt, you’re—”

“I am well, Zichen.” He is well because Song Zichen is here with him, but he does not say so, he no longer knows if that is welcome from him. Instead, he merely repeats it, to assure them both it is true. “I am well.”

*

Fire crackles warm between them, a merry snapping of flame and the rich-sharp scent of burning pine, driving away the chill and press of night. The witcher reaches his hands towards the heat, reaches just into the place where warmth borders on pain, flexes his fingers into the sting of it and lets it chase the numb ache from his bones. Even when he draws his hands away, the heat lingers, tingling on his skin. 

He turns his face towards the soft, slight sound of Zichen’s breathing, and for a while there is only that, only fire and breath. He aches to touch, to be touched, to reach out across the distance between them. It is only the length of his arm, perhaps less, but to him it could be a chasm of a thousand miles, except for that breath. That small sound tethering them together across space and time. 

There was a time when Zichen touched him, times when he could bear it, rare and precious things. Nights in inns fine enough they could bathe in fresh hot water and Zichen would comb his hair and then…

It is useless to think of such things, to let the steady sound of that breath conjure memories perhaps better forgotten. Xiao Xingchen is bloodied, he is dirty with the sweat and dust of many roads. And he doesn’t even know, yet, if Zichen would want to touch him, even if they had a hundred baths. 

Zichen… left. And the witcher has lived on memories since, and told himself he was content. Witchers usually walk the Path alone. There had been life before Song Zichen, and there had been life after.

But now he is here, he is an arm’s reach away, he is…

Something bumps his hand on his knee. “Xingchen. Wash your neck.” It’s a small, leather-wrapped bundle, and when he takes it they are, for a moment, connected again. Xiao Xingchen’s hand, the bundle, Song Zichen’s hand, links in a chain. Then Zichen lets go. Inside is a soft cloth, a vial, and a small stoppered pot.

The witcher smiles. “Thank you, Zichen.” He pulls the cork from the vial, is immediately assailed by the alcohol and herbal scent of the tincture, and pours a little onto the cloth. It stings on the cuts and he draws in a sharp, involuntary hiss of breath.

“I should be thanking you,” Song Zichen replies. His words are slow, like they take effort to form. He’s always been quiet, but this is new. New in the last ten years, at least. There is much he does not know about Zichen’s life. 

“Whatever for? You helped me.” He cleans the cuts carefully, then dabs salve from the little pot onto them to seal them from the air, stop the bleeding. They hurt, but they will heal. To a witcher, they are little more than scratches, hardly worth the effort to treat. Except to Zichen, who cleans every wound no matter how minor.

“But you saved my life. I… never thanked you.”

Xiao Xingchen stares into a fire he cannot see, recalling what is no longer before him. Waking in a room bathed in the warmth of sunlight, the scent of herbs and medicines not so different from the one Zichen handed him tonight. The thorough hands and gentle explanations of the priestess of the immortal Melitele. And no sign of Zichen anywhere. 

“No,” he agrees, “but you did not have to. I did it because I wanted you to live, not because I wished to be thanked.”

“I should have stayed,” Song Zichen protests. “I should have been there when you woke up, I…”

The witcher considers the things he could say. Considers his propensity to forgive whether or not forgiveness is earned. He does not believe in holding grudges. He does, however, believe in telling the truth.

“It would have been nice,” he admits to the fire, “I would have liked your company if you had stayed. But a Witcher’s place is on the Path.”

“Xingchen. Don’t make excuses for me.” The rough voice is sharp, but it does not cut him. Only, when the witcher smiles, it’s a sad thing, a cold and distant moon. 

“Very well. Then all I want… is to know why you left.”

The silence is long, stretched thin between them, fraying apart in the absence of an answer to the one question that has troubled the witcher all these years. The world is wide, he did not wonder much that their paths did not cross. He does not even wonder that they parted. Witchers are lonely creatures, created for solitude-- though not necessarily designed for it. 

“I did not think…” Zichen’s voice floats out of the night to him, soft, like the sound of a saw on some faraway tree. “I did not think you would wish me to be there. It was my fault, my error, that cost you… when the priestess told me you would be blind…” The words, like the silence, fray, come apart. 

“Ah, Zichen.” Xiao Xingchen shakes his head, ignoring how the gesture pulls at the wound on his neck, aches in the sore muscles of his shoulders. “I made my own choice. I would far sooner have lost my eyes than lose you.”

Zichen makes a hoarse, choked sound, as if the witcher had struck him rather than speaking as he did, quiet and even.

“And yet, I left,” he says, bitter as bile, “and so you lost both.”

“No,” the witcher says placidly. The wind lifts the ends of his hair around his face, a cool brush on his cheek that he might wish, if he was given to wishing, was the trail of a fingertip on his skin. It is not, merely wind that smells of distant rain. He does not wish, but he holds a small ember of hope close in his heart, nursed but not relied upon. “I could have you back, if you wished.”

Song Zichen must be very close, closer than he’d thought, for his knee jostles the witcher’s with the jolt of his movement. When he speaks, the words come halting out of him, stumblingly formed from some place of guilt and tongueless desire. “If _I_ wish? Xingchen… do _you_ wish it? For my company again, on the Path.”

And he does, oh, he does, and he has always been the one of them more open with his heart. “The world is wide and cold, A-Lan,” Xiao Xingchen murmurs into the dark and the firelight and the vastness of time and space between them. “But it is warmer with you at my side.”

Zichen’s throat clicks as he swallows. “I am sorry,” he says, a sudden rush of syllables. “I am sorry I left you. I am sorry I did not find you sooner…”

The witcher can’t let him continue like this, guilt-spurred when he was forgiven long ago, when he was never blamed in the first place, when that guilt might make him do something they would both come to regret. If he could have touched him, if that would have been welcome, he would put a hand on Zichen’s, take it to press to his chest, or perhaps to feel the warmth of it on his mouth, but he has only words to break this tide.

“Consider it mended,” he says, with kind finality. “You don’t owe me anything, please, do not stay because you think you must. Only if you…”

“I do,” says Song Lan Zichen. “You are right about the world. All I have wanted is to walk it with you once more.”

The village is empty when the witchers take the north road side by side under the first watery light of dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to theherocomplex for the beta! <3


End file.
